Dec 7, 2017

Trump’s decision dropped the last fig leaf and added the final straw
that will indeed reshape Western Asia and Probably the world but not in ways
that the Zionists who run the Trump administration planned or wished for. IT IS
NOW TIME FOR ACTIONS (see last part after explanation).

The last fig leaf: Everyone now recognizes that the last fig leaf of the
mythical/mirage ”two-state solution” have now ended with this z\announcement by
Trump tat illegal occupation and annexation of Arab Jerusalem is recognized by
the government of the USA. In my 2004 book explaining why and how the “two state”
public relations campaign is not a solution but was invented by Ben Gurion in
the 1920s to keep the world thinking that Zionists want peace while they
consolidated their power and extended their control and then expanded
(eventually to the ultimate goal of the “Jewish empire”. Ben-Gurion was indeed
very prophetic when he wrote in his diary that we should give the illusion of accepting
to divide the land until we strengthen ourselves and then we will expand to the
rest of the country [Erez Ysrael, Nile to Euphrates] “with or without the
acceptance of the Arabs” and when he wrote things like “it must be clear that there is no room in the country for both peoples
. . . If the Arabs leave it, the country will become wide and spacious for us .
. . The only solution is a Land of Israel, at least a western land of Israel
[i.e. Palestine], without Arabs. There is no room here for compromises . . .
There is no way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighboring
countries, to transfer all of them, save perhaps for Bethlehem, Nazareth, and
the old Jerusalem. Not one village must be left, not one tribe. The transfer
must be directed at Iraq, Syria, and even Transjordan” (and indeed 7.5 million
of us are now refugees or displaced people). Ben-Gurion also wrote that "We
are presently involved not only in a conflict with our Arab neighbors, but, to
some extent, with most of mankind as it is organized in the United Nations -
because of Jerusalem. Only a blind man does not see that the sources of this
conflict are not political, economic or military alone, but also
ideological." The ideology he refers to is Zionism (which s a form of colonialism and obviously incompatible with native interest)

The last fig leaf has fallen also off of the lie of a “peace process”
supposedly led by the US government which in turn has a foreign policy dictated
by the Zionist lobby. It is the last fig leaf that protected the Arab leaders
from Riyad to Ramalllah who helped Israel get away with ethnic cleansing,
crimes against humanity, and war crimes. It is the last fig leaf that protected
the hypocritical Western Leaders from Sydney to Berlin to London to Washington
who speak of International law and did everything in their power to physically
support and fund an apartheid state that violates just about every provision of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as the Fourth Geneva
Convention and countless UN resolutions (both UN security council and general
assembly resolutions). It even violates the provisions of Israel’s own admission
to the UN and should have long been expelled from the UN.

The LAST STRAWS: As the fig leaves have all fallen, the insults to the
Arab, Islamic, AND Christian world accumulated to the breaking point. Nearly 70
years have passed (1948-1949) since Zionists depopulated West Jerusalem of its
Christian and Muslim Population and 50 years have passed since Zionists illegally
(per UN resolutions) occupied East Jerusalem and then illegally annexed it to the
illegal apartheid state of Israel in the process causing further ethnic
cleansing, so that Jerusalem has been changing from multi-religious and
multicultural to the (mainly Ashkenazi) Zionist-Jewish city. Israel has been
doing slow torture hoping to drive the remaining Palestinians out of Jerusalem “circumspectly”
(as Ben-Gurion also once put it). I say the last straw because this extreme
fascist government of Israel that took the final decision to move the US
Embassy now appears in full control of the US administration (before there was
some thought that is only 95% control). This will break the backs of many
camels. To be specific and to start with the first line of camels Arab regimes that were
having huge difficulty anyway balancing loads left and right. Loads include normalization
with Zionism and imperialism thinking this will guard their regimes (it will
not, many US/Israeli puppets were abandoned once their utility expired). Loads
also include the heavy load of their people who hate hypocrisy and sympathize with
suffering people whether in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and perhaps especially in
Palestine (the Holy Land). Loads also
include their ever deteriorating economies thanks to their corruption,
nepotism, lack of democracy, and lack of transparency. These regimes will now have to reevaluate the strategy: stay the current course of collusion leading to their demise or answer their people's calls: join the resistance, organize, and ACT (not just issue empty words).

I predicted in previous blogs (e.g. see my November 21st
blog http://popular-resistance.blogspot.com/2017/11/will-palestine-be-liquidated-with-arab.html
) that this would happen and I predicted that mayhem and violence will follow
and I think all Zionist leaders also see this and predicted it. But their fatal
mistake is thinking that they can have “manageable conflicts” that keep their
neighbors and victims busy (divide and conquer). Now Zionists in the White House
like colonial advocate Kushner are pitting the US against the whole Arab, Islamic,
and even Christian world. Their last three bets of this nature were mostly
failures (Iraq, Syria, Yemen). They have also failed so far to get the US to
attack Iran for them (as they did with Iraq). They are failing to get Saudi
Arabia to fight a war in Lebanon (thanks to Lebanese strong civil society). So
like a gambler who keeps losing; they are now going for the jack-pot of a
global religious war over Jerusalem that they think they will come out victorious
and rulers of the world (the reality is a nuclear war that will end Homo
sapience). Zionists and their puppets MUST fail like before. But we need to ACT
now to stop it. We need all collaborators to see the danger (even to
themselves). It is urgent and existential struggle.

The people of Palestine are of course the first and main line of
defense for our country. My sister Sahar wrote a blog about this from her
(Christian) perspective that I thought brought out a good analogy of why this
could be the last straw for the people.

The South African BDS movement issued a call to action that included
this: “Actions speak louder, it is the time for concrete steps to hold Israel
accountable for its unlawful annexation of Palestinian land and its oppression
of Christian, Muslim, Jewish and all other Palestinians.” How to act? I
say be proactive not reactive, plan, and above all ORGANIZE. Here are 70 ways
to act: http://qumsiyeh.org/whatyoucando/

I would add: cut off all contacts with the US administration. Any
decent Arab or Muslim leader would do that. Any who does not needs to answer to
the people

Nov 21, 2017

Zionism is a colonial movement invented in the 19th century to
transform a multi-religious Palestine to the apartheid “Jewish state of Israel”.
It was to be “a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization
against barbarism” (Herzl in the Jews’ State). This colonial racist idea
remained unchanged since founding of the “Jewish Colonization Association” in
1891 and the World Zionist Congress in 1897. Like all colonial movements, it
focuses on the dual task of destroying native life and creating new exclusivist
racist regimes and it gets support from empires and from complicity.

Britain put the Al-Saud family in charge of the area of Hijaz (which
was to become the kleptocracy of “Saudi Arabia”). Abdul Aziz Al-Saud responded in
1915 to British requests by writing in his own hand: “I the Sultan Abdel Aziz
Bin Abdel Alrahman Al-Faysal Al-Saud decide and acknowledge a thousand times to
Sir Percy Cox the representative of Great Britain that I have no objection to
give Palestine to the poor Jews or to others as seen [fit] by Britain that I
would not go outside [disobey] its opinion until the hour of calling [end of
the world].” The good relations at the expense of Palestinians by the Saud
ruling family remained to this day with a brief period when Arab nationalism
was strong and the Royal family suspended oil shipments to the US in the October
1973 war.

The PLO began its long process of “compromise” with colonizers in 1974.
Israel then signed a “peace treaty” with Egypt in and had good working
relations including cooperation in crimes against humanity in isolating and
besieging the Gaza strip. There was a brief period when Morsi was elected
President of Egypt when there was the potential of relieving the blockade but
that soon ended when the military retook power in Egypt. Egypt is however
trying to play a role in mediation between Hamas and Fatah now which could help
end the blockade and may help reclaim a liberation struggle.

Israel has maintained efforts to break-up the (already fragmented) Arab
world for example in developing proxy militias and aligning with extremist
right wing Christian leaders in Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s. Working through
proxies or directly, Israel and its Arab stooges committed massacres such as at
Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982. “Israel” maintained good
relations with separatist movements in Northern Iraq and in South Sudan and
helped arm the South Sudanese army. Israel’s relationship to Barazani and
attempts to break-up Iraq is now well known. In the 1990s at the behest of the Israel
lobby, Iraq was subjected to sanctions led by the US and Arab regimes that
resulted in the death of one million Iraqis half of them children. At the same
behest, the US attacked Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen (see http://qumsiyeh.org/connectingthedotsiraqpalestine/).

In 1986, King Hassan II of Morocco invited the Israeli Prime
Minister for talks and following the Oslo disastrous accords, Morocco
accelerated its economic ties and political contacts with Israel opening of
bilateral liaison offices in 1994. As the late Edward Said showed eloquently that
the Oslo Accords were a second Nakba for the Palestinian creating a Palestinian
authority whose task was designated as protecting the occupiers from resistance
and normalizing the occupation. After Arafat and Abbas signed these surrender treaties,
Israel’s economy and its foreign recognition grew rapidly. The agreements also
gave the occupying power the green light to grow its illegal activities in the
occupied areas not turned over to the Palestinian authority (area C is the
majority of the land).

Economic relations existed between Qatar and “Israel” between 1996 and
2000. In 2005, Saudi Arabia announced the end of its ban on Israeli goods and
services. Diplomatic and other ties between Tunisia and Israel fluctuated
between strong ones in the 1990s to weaker ones during 2000-2005 to pick up
again until the Tunisian revolution. In 1919 King Faisal Al-Hussain (Hashemite
leader) signed an agreement with Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann but one of his
sons was later removed (by France) from power in Syria because of his
opposition to Zionism. Israel signed a “peace treaty” with Jordan in 1994.
However public sentiment in Jordan (among Jordanians of Palestinian or of
Trans-Jordan heritage) remains strongly opposed to normalization efforts
including in saddling Jordan with huge debts that serve Israeli interests (e.g.
of the Red Sea-Dead Sea canal).

The CIA and the British intelligence services toppled the elected
Mosaddaq government in Iran in 1953 to bring a more Israel friendly regime. This
lasted until the Iranian revolution ended the Pahlavi criminal regime in 1979. Israel
had good working and cooperation with Turkey from 1949 to 2011 when Israeli
leaders engaged in a series of affronts and blunders including murdering
Turkish citizens on the Mavi Marmara ship in International waters.

In 2015 Israel opened a diplomatic mission with the United Arab
Emirates (UAE) and has helped Saudi Arabia and the UAE launch the war on Yemen
in order to control the strategic Bab Al Mandeb strait (Red Sea to Indian
Ocean). Egypt has also agreed to give two of its Islands in the Strait of Tiran
to Saudi Arabia on Israel’s behest.

The above is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of Zionist collusion
with Arab leaders to destroy Palestine. Much remains hidden. Yet, understanding
this history helps understand why rulers of “Saudi Arabia” and the UAE and
others are colluding with Israel and the USA in a feverish attack on resistance
forces in the Arab and Islamic world. While such collusion with colonialism is
common in all parts of the world, the collaborators fail to read history to
understand the fate of all tools of colonialism. They will face the same fate
as other collaborators. As tools of colonialism, they are discarded as soon as
they fulfil their designated roles.

Much of the developments after 1973 would not have happened had the PLO
remained true to its principles. This is indeed a historic moment in our part
of the world. Zionists feel emboldened like never before and intend on ending the
Palestine question once and for all with collusion especially the key issue of
refugees (would be forced to settle outside of Palestine). Developments in
Saudi Arabia, UAE, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and the rest of our region need
to be watched in the context of this struggle and with the centrality of the
issue of Palestine since it is the reason for all this. It is a struggle
between those who think they can guarantee their thrones and positions by doing
Zionist bidding and those who challenge colonialism. The choice is between
mayhem that will spare no one (including those who collaborate) or rejection of
division and then unity to fight imperialism, colonialism, and Zionism.
Palestine remains the litmus test, the Achille’s heel of imperialism, and the
key to peace. Each of us should take a clear stand. I am optimistic
because 12.7 million Palestinians and hundreds of millions of others who follow
their conscience will not let Zionism (and its complicit Arab and American
rulers) liquidate the most just cause in human history. It is wise of
complicity leaders to rethink their positions if for nothing else than for
their own interests since colonial powers use tools and discard them and are
never true to their words to those that do not belong to their “tribe”. This is
amply illustrated with history of Israel itself and its collaborators (e.g. in
Lebanon in the 1980s). Now we need to all work together towards a peace with
justice, the inevitable outcome.

Nov 19, 2017

Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh,
Director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History and the Palestine Institute
for Biodiversity and Sustainability - Bethlehem University and author of
several books including ‘Popular Resistance in Palestine’.

Transcript of talk
given at the Merton Arts Space, Wimbledon Library at the invitation of the
Merton Palestine Solidarity Campaign on 31 October 2017, attended by circa 60
people.

‘Biodiversity, Sustainability and Human Rights in
Palestine’

Professor Qumsiyeh started by drawing a parallel between
nature and human society and argued that as in nature, diversity makes
societies strong and uniform societies rarely succeed. In 2014 he set up the Palestine Museum of Natural
History and the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at
Bethlehem University. He invited the
audience to support them (quite a bit more money needs to be raised) and to
visit.

Prof Qumsiyeh said that as a scientist and being medically
trained, whenever a patient comes to him, the key to treatment is to arrive at
a diagnosis. Until the correct diagnosis
is identified, the symptoms won’t make sense.
Similarly with the conflict in Palestine, it’s vital first and foremost
to establish a diagnosis. Everything
we’re observing – the brutality, house demolitions, restrictions on movement,
settlements, blockade, counter-attacks, even the terrorism – all these are
symptoms which only make sense when the correct diagnosis is established. And in this case, the diagnosis is obvious -
it’s colonization.

The following is a transcript of most of the talk (with 4-5
minutes missing from both the start and the end, apologies):

“The British Government approached a guy named George Gawler
in 1841, and they told him “You’re an expert on colonization because you were
in charge of the colonization of Australia, setting up the penal colonies in
Australia” (there’s a town in Australia called Gawler City) and they said to
him “Look into the feasibility of doing Jewish colonies like you did in
Australia”. And he did. He published his
report in 1845 and he followed it up with an expansion pamphlet the title of
which was “Emancipation of the Jews … for the maintenance of the Protestant
profession of Empire” and was entitled to the support of the British nation. He
submitted this report to the British government which loved it. He had only a couple of minor obstacles, he
said you guys can overcome them – “one is finding enough money to do this and
the second one is finding enough Jews and non-Jews to support it”. And indeed the main objection in 1847 to this
project came from the only two members of Parliament who were Jewish at the
time – they objected vehemently because they said “you’re going to ship us to
this backwater of the Empire like you shipped the criminals to Australia?”

The British government adopted it and they proceeded and
they funded it in 1852. The funding was
mostly for exploration (“The Palestine Exploration Fund”) but then they managed
to find some Jewish Zionists who have a lot of money, people like Rothchild and
so the first Zionist colony was established in Palestine in 1880. And in 1881 we had our first uprising or
intifada. So for people who say the first intifada was in 1987, I want to
correct that – the first was in 1881 and since then we’ve had 14
uprisings.

In 1881, Herzl wasn’t very important, he was a teenage boy –
his father was a leading Zionist. In
1897 the younger Herzl (Theodor) was a
political leader and managed to gather enough Jews to form a World Zionist
Organisation and he wrote “This would be a good thing as a rampart of Europe
against Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism”. In 1897, when Herzl held that conference, 97%
of the population of Palestine was not Jewish.
How are you going to take a country that’s 97% not Jewish and make it
the Jewish State of Israel? It’s a conundrum.
Herzl sent two rabbis to Palestine to study the viability of a Jewish
state. The rabbis went and travelled
from North to South and East to West and all the way to the Negev and before
they sent their full report to Mr Herzl they sent him a telegram which simply
said “The bride is beautiful but she’s married to another” It’s a wonderful country
for a Jewish state but what would you do with these people? The answer was
obvious – these people had to go. Send them away? Kill them? We have to do something. And everybody knew this – the British
government knew it, the French knew it, the Europeans knew it, the Americans
knew it, the Palestinians knew and the Zionists knew it. Nobody can claim they
were ignorant of what this entailed.
Because it’s obvious, you cannot do colonization by inclusiveness of the
native people – it’s never happened in history and never will happen. Ben Gurion said there’s only room for one
people here. Maybe we’ll leave a few in Bethlehem and Nazareth – you know why?
Because there were Christians there and he wanted my ancestors to hang around
there for the tourist industry. But then the Zionists changed their minds and
said the Christians had to go as well, and indeed they did. Now to do this required getting Empire
support. There was at the beginning but because of the resistance, they tried
to stop the Zionist project and as a result, the Zionist movement decided to
move its headquarters in 1904 from Vienna to London because London was closer
to the British and French empires. You
know about the Balfour Declaration of 1917 but I don’t know if you know that at
the time, there was a parallel declaration from the French government in almost
the exact same language. Now why do we know more about the Balfour Declaration
than we know about the Paul Cambon document?
For the simple reason that by the luck of the draw, when they divided
the ME as spoils of WW1, Area A ended up under French control and Area B under
British control so it was the British who were left with having to draw up the
Balfour Declaration. If it had been the
other way round then today I would not be coming here to talk about the Balfour
Declaration and speak in English – I would be like the Syrians and my second
language would be French and I would be in Paris speaking about the Paul Cambon
declaration.

Now Balfour by the way, and Cambon, understood why they did
this – it was for geo-political interests, it was little to do with sympathy
for Jews, in fact Balfour was anti-semitic.
He wrote to his successor in the FO saying “Zionism being good or bad,
right or wrong, is of far more import to us and the needs of the Empire than
the desires and wishes of the native inhabitants of the country and we don’t
even go through the ‘form’ of consultation with the Arab inhabitants.” In other
words, “we don’t even bother with looking as though we’re asking for their
opinion – the ‘form’ of consulting, not even consulting itself.

So everyone knew what this entailed and so we too knew as
Palestinians. If you want to know more
about this you can read a book like Ilan Pappe’s book .. 530 villages and towns
were de-populated. By the way 2 villages were de-populated long before 1948 –
they were de-populated in 1921 and 1922 – you know why? The British appointed as the first High
Commissioner of Palestine a guy by the name of Herbert Samuel. He was a Zionist. He represented the Zionists in 1919 at the
Paris conference (which was supposed to be for peace but it was about what to
do with all the territories gained after WW1).
When they gathered at the Paris Peace conference they discovered that
the Palestinians were not allowed to be represented and not even to stand at
the entrance to the building. They tried to send a delegation and the British
government in 1919 which controlled Palestine prevented them from boarding the
boats and they stood on the pier in Yaffa harbour objecting to not being
allowed to board the boats.

Anyway, Herbert Samuel, who’s a name you should investigate
because he is in my opinion more important that either Balfour or Herzl or even
Ben Gurion because he was the first Jewish Zionist ruler of Palestine – 1921. He’s the one who took over Palestine and
established the Jewish State of Israel, as a British citizen who happened to be
Jewish and Zionist. When he was appointed, the major Zionist newspaper in
Palestine had the headline: “The First Jewish King in Palestine in 2000
years!” Indeed, he was like a king
because the British government gave him all the authority of a king. And not a king by even British standards but
a king with absolute rule like in the Middle Ages – he could do whatever he
wanted. For example, he issued a
statement that said: “Segregate public schools”. And it was carried out. The Palestinians could only object and
protest but he could execute this.
Imagine segregating public schools meaning that he had Jewish schools
and non-Jewish schools. And the Jewish
schools were under the control of the Zionist forces not under the control of
religious Jewish institutions – they were not allowed to have anything to do
with them. So that’s how he did it. And
then he said “Give the natural resources of the Dead Sea and all the wetlands
to the Zionist forces, 119 species of migrating birds, and it was all done with
the stroke of a pen. He was a gentleman
who was always dressed in white, meticulously pressed – the Palestinians called
him ‘The White Devil’ and basically everything he touched turned to dust. And this is when the problem started in
Palestine – the formation of the Jewish state, Zionist militias, terrorist
organisations like the Haganah – all this happened under the power of this guy
in the 1920s.

The bottom line for us is that 7 million of us are refugees
or displaced people, literally pushed into the sea and then there’s the
distribution of the Palestinians in the ME and then Israel occupied the West
Bank and Gaza and that’s a part of the story many of you are more familiar with
and proceeded to build colonies in the WB and the map on the right shows major
colonies in the WB. There are 230 Israeli colonies and they house 750,000
Israeli Jews, there are actually more Israeli Jews per square mile in the WB
than inside the Green Line, what some people call Israel, I don’t call it
Israel I call it Palestine 1948 areas. For example in the Bethlehem area, these
are the names of the major settlements and they control most of our territory
in the Bethlehem district when they took land from own ancestors and my own
family etc. Historically then what
happened to Palestine, the shrinkage of the lands allocated to the Palestinians
for the benefit of immigrants from Europe so today we’re left in these
bantustans. This shrinking map of
Palestine, do you know where it came from, who’s the first person who drew
it? It was actually my 13-year old son
because he saw the map (of America) at the bottom in 1998 and he said Dad isn’t this what
happened to Palestine? And I said Yes, and he said “shouldn’t you draw one like
this?” I said “no, shouldn’t you draw
one like this?” So he drew it and I put it in my book and since then it’s been
used ever since – I have no copyright, don’t worry.

This is colonization.
Colonization is a common human phenomenon. It’s not a bad diagnosis for
this patient. It’s like the flu, it’s
common, just about everybody gets the flu.
And just about every country on earth got this illness at one time or another. And if you go through the roster of the UN
alphabetically for the first 20-25 countries, every one of them was either a
colonizer or a colonized country or both.
It’s a common malady if you like.
It doesn’t mean you’re going to die.
It’s OK, it’s human history. And
we have to accept human history.
Scientists have a notion of acceptance of things as they are. I don’t
like the fact that there are parasites in Africa that attack children’s eyes
and make them blind. It’s part of
evolution and nature unfortunately. It’s
terrible for those children, but that’s the way things are. As scientists, we just have to describe
them. OK but if we consider them an
illness, what is the cure and how do we proceed? First, you have to look at
other patients and what happened.
Amongst other colonial struggles, there are three possible
scenarios. Scenario 1: the Algerian
model. It’s very rare that the natives
win and the colonizers pack their bags and go.
It doesn’t happen very often because the natives don’t have the
wherewithal or weapons or anything else and in the case of Algeria I wouldn’t
want anybody to think that we can follow this model because it cost the
Algerians 1 million lives and 1 mil French packed their bags and went to
Europe, I don’t say went back to Europe because they were there for
generations, 5 or 6 generations. If you go to Algiers it’s French architecture.
It was only in 1962 that this happened.
Scenario 2 is a little more common but still fairly rare, and that’s
genocide. You kill the natives and you
can stabilize the situation. Think
Australia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, the US. There are so few natives left
that you can think of these countries as long-term stable countries though I’m
a US citizen and on Columbus Day I went out and demonstrated with the native
Americans in Boston and other places. For Thanksgiving Day which is this
mythology that the natives and the colonizers sat down and shared food around
the table – it was a thanksgiving holiday for the successful genocide / massacre of the native Americans. That was
the original thanksgiving. But in the
end, thank God, very few countries are like that.

The third and most likely outcome, which is found in most
countries in the world, is what? Think
South America, Central America, Caribbean islands, Canada, SE Asia, the
Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, all these islands in the Pacific and Atlantic
oceans – the colonizers and the natives get together and you can call it a
lose-lose situation or a win-win situation depending on whether you see your
glass as half full or half empty.

But these are the 3 scenarios. Which do you prefer? Which scenario do we
Palestinians prefer? We Palestinians
have always called for the third scenario and I can send you document after document
from the 19th century, from the first Palestinian organizations
called Jewish-Christian Associations that issued declarations about Herzl and
about everything that we Palestinians love diversity, we have no problem with
Jews, they can live with us, we have no problem with immigrants either by the
way. We welcomed for example the
Armenians when they came, including after the Armenian holocaust (the word
‘holocaust’ was used for the Armenians before it was used for Jews and gypsies
and others in WW2). So we welcomed them,
we even gave the Armenians a quarter in our old city – it’s called the
‘Armenian Quarter’ in Jerusalem. They
became natives in every sense of the word.
We’re all at some level immigrants, we all came from East Africa. So that is what I believe is the outcome and
what we as Palestinians have been calling for.
It’s also important to have the right diagnosis so that you can
understand the symptoms. If you do not
make the right diagnosis, the symptoms will seem puzzling. If someone has
cancer and you see anaemia you might say well they’re not eating well, they
should eat more spinach. But you need to
understand the symptoms, and the symptoms are many. Think of anything - the
wall, the settlements, the discrimination against Palestinians, the home
demolitions, the violence, call it the terrorism I don’t care – but the bottom
line is, it’s all understandable in that context. Because after all violence is totally
understandable in the context of colonialism. Colonialism cannot be done
nicely, you have to kick people out violently and people resist. It’s
understandable. What do the colonizers think about this resistance?
Understandable also – not excusable, but understandable. When the Europeans went to North America or
South Africa they were just circling the wagons protecting themselves from
these savages and barbarians, attacking us for no obvious reason, killing our
women and children, maybe it’s a religious question, maybe it’s a language
problem, maybe they don’t understand what we’re trying to do bringing them
technology and knowledge and building shining cities, manifest destiny, maybe
they don’t understand our language and that’s why they are trying to kill
us. It always becomes logical but if you
remove the diagnosis it doesn’t make sense, it would not fit. Why did the Israelis start an operation
called “Operation Hunt Cow” in your town to catch the 18 fugitive cows in your
town? We had that in Beit Sahour - there was a military order that said we cannot
own milking cows so why was that? What
do they expect us to want to do? Of
course they don’t want us to have milking cows, for the same reason that the
Europeans and Americans killed millions of buffalo, to deprive the native
Americans from a way of life so they don’t retain their livelihood and they go
away. It makes sense, logically. Again,
you don’t have to vilify this, you don’t have to .. whatever but it’s naturally
to be expected.

So I want to switch themes now because you’re not here to
hear me describe the symptoms and I’m not going to carry on talking about
symptoms – there are many. But I want
to start thinking in winning attitudes, not in describing inherent problems which
we’re facing. If you look at the
situation, what comes into your mind, with Israel doing this and doing that?
When I saw a picture like this (pointing
to slide showing two women holding placards – one saying “I am a Palestinian
Arab. I was born in Jerusalem. Palestine is my homeland but I cannot return
there” and the other reads “I am an American Jew. I was born in the USA. Israel
is my homeland but I can “return” there”), the first time I met these two
ladies actually I said this is good, it’s great – it’s two ladies, one
Palestinian, one American Jew working together for peace and justice. This is what we have to look at, we have to
look at every good thing. The nakba, everybody said the nakba was such a
horrible thing, well it was – my grandmother was from Nazareth and we suffered,
my mother lost her best friend in Deir Yassin, she was a school teacher, she
was killed with all her students, horrible things, but the nakba also had a
positive side, I discussed this in my book. I mean if you think about it,
there’s a lot of things that are positive about us as humans and when
challenges face us we rise up and improve.
I am sure if we didn’t have the nakba, I wouldn’t have a PhD, I’d
probably be a farm worker now in Beit Sahour.
But I got education and went into medicine because of the nakba –
necessity is the mother of invention and all that. So we have to start thinking about positive
things. I’ll skip because of time. These
ladies for example (pointing at another
slide), were the first leaders of the Palestinian Women’s movement in the
1920s. They were going to meet the British High Commissioner and realized it
was a waste of time so they started demonstrating and not only that, theirs was
the first demonstration in human history that used automobiles – in October
1929, 120 cars were gathered from throughout Palestine (you can imagine there
weren’t many cars in Palestine at that time) so they came from all over - Haifa
and Jaffa etc to Jerusalem. That story made the London Times. These ladies organized lobbying in
Parliament, the first lobbying for the Palestinian question one-on-one came
from these ladies and the first support for Palestinian rights came in 1931 as
a result of the action of these ladies who used their own money to travel to
London to lobby Parliament here. We need
to start thinking about the successes and not the failures. When these
gentlemen (another slide showing
Palestinian dignitaries of different religions) met and objected to the
Balfour Declaration on 2 Nov 1932 in Jerusalem – these are people of various
religions, they’re usually at each other’s throats, sometimes the priests are
hitting each other over the head with brooms because one is Catholic and one is
Greek Orthodox etc - but they managed to
get together and they agreed to object to the Balfour Declaration and to the
British so-called mandate over Palestine but not only that but to engage in
civil disobedience and action against the British government in Palestine and some
of these people ended up in British jails – this is in 1936 in a Jerusalem jail
where there’s 4 Muslim leaders and one Christian leader together.

We Palestinians engaged in many forms of resistance and I
discuss this in my book. When soldiers
prevented teachers and students going to school and they have their classes in
the street, that’s a form of resistance, as when we climb walls etc. All these are forms of resistance. And even
innovative forms of resistance like involving people like you internationally
and ISN people. ISN International
started in my village of Beit Sahour and brought tens of thousands of people to
Palestine to help us and we welcome you anytime by the way, you can come and
visit and see what you can see if you want. If you decide to take positive
action you can also join ISN, for example these ISN people protected the Church
of the Nativity when it was being shelled by the Israeli army. Israel is more careful when there are
internationals in demonstrations of civil disobedience. Not always however,
Richard Cauley and many others were killed by the Israelis and hundreds of
internationals were injured. For example my friend Emily .. who happens to be
an American Jew. Emily was a Zionist
actually and she came as a visual artist to draw. I told her to stay away from demonstrations
and she stayed distant and yet they shot her in the eye and she lost her
eye. But her family are all
anti-zionists as a result. Since I came
back to Palestine by the way in 2008 for the past 9 years I’ve lost 19 of my
own friends. Imagine losing 19 friends
of yours in 9 years, how would you feel?
People like Bassem Abu Rahman, the most gentle person you can
imagine. None of these people by the way
were engaged in any armed resistance.
Bassem Abu Rahman was the most gentle human being you can imagine. I study nature and I went to his village and
was catching some insects and he said “why are you killing them?” I said I
needed to capture them to study them and understand biodiversity, it’s
taxonomy, and he said “but they’re living creatures”. But anyway he was shot with tear gas. I went
to his funeral and also went a month later and his sister Jawaher showed me his
room and it was kept the same way as it was and unfortunately she herself was
killed by inhaling tear gas at the same demonstration 11 months later. And the last friend I lost was this guy on
the right (pointing at another slide)
wearing the T-shirt I gave him and here we’re standing in front of a bus stop
to try and ride the bus – this is what we call ‘Palestine Freedom Riders’ and
the idea was to show the racism in the state of Israel and have civil
disobedience by trying to ride the buses.
Because any Jewish person can come to Palestine, get automatic
citizenship at Lod airport which Israel renamed Ben Gurion Airport and now
we’re not allowed to use it. But anyway
any Jew in the world and even any convert to Judaism can come to Palestine, get
automatic citizenship, live on stolen Palestinian land and freely travel around
including Jersusalem whereas I as a Palestinian, I happen to be a Christian but
I cannot go to Jersusalem where I used to be a high school teacher, which is
only 3 miles away. I cannot even enter
Jerusalem according to Israeli military orders, I cannot enter Jerusalem with
my American passport – this is how racist the state is. So we’re trying to highlight the racism. I was arrested many times during these acts
of civil disobedience, more times than I can count. We call you to join us and boycott the
sanctions as the sensible way of working with us as human rights
protesters. You saw the film about the
Museum – the Museum is also a form of resistance – the Museum’s motto is
‘Respect’. First as Palestinians we have
to start by respecting ourselves. Mental
occupation is more dangerous than physical occupation. Steve Biko I think in South Africa said this: “The best weapon in the hands of the occupier
is the mind of the occupied” and that’s because they make us believe that we
are sub-human beings, that we have to obey orders. I think I told you that I am not allowed in
Jerusalem by Israeli military orders, that doesn’t mean I don’t enter
Jerusalem, last month I was there. I
smuggle myself in, as we say in Arabic “Tuz”, I don’t care, laws here, laws
there, it’s not their country to give us laws.
This is what we do and we have to do this, by freeing our minds. In the
Civil Rights Movement, in a similar saying to what Steven Biko said, in the US
among black people, it went something like this “Free your mind and your ass
will follow”. We have to free our minds
and how do we free our minds? We have to
encourage children and children have free minds by the way. What we do as adults is we try to suppress,
suppress their curiosity, suppress everything, we say “don’t touch”, no let
them eat that, it’s good for their immune system. Give them a little freedom, let them think,
let them challenge. “Why is the sky
blue?” “Oh shut up son, I don’t know why, God created it this way”. No let them
think, say “let’s go and look it up together”.
This is what we have to do, encourage children, start with
children. And once they respect
themselves then they can respect others, other religions or cultures or
backgrounds, whatever, and they can also respect nature, the environment, animals
and plants.

So that’s what we do in the Museum but we also do more in
terms of research, the effect of Israeli what I call environmental injustice,
for example stealing the water of the River Jordan basin by diverting it to the
Western areas and drying up the Jordan Valley and now to help the Dead Sea
which has shrunk a lot they want to use sludge from the desalination plants of
the canal which they have already half-built between the Red Sea and the Dead
Sea. The Canal has been dug on the
Jordanian side not on the so-called Israeli side, you know why? It’s so that
Jordan will be saddled with the debts of this canal – about US$ 15 bn! It’s the
most stupid project I can imagine as an environmentalist. I did some study and
won’t bother you with the details, it’s devastating to the environment and the
future prospects and it’ll saddle Jordan with all this huge debt which
Jordanian citizens of future generations will look back on and curse – why
Jordan signed this agreement under American pressure. We have many problems including climate
change, we have problems with water not because we have a shortage of water,
there’s actually more rainfall in Ramallah than there is in London.”

This is as far as the recording got. Three or so minutes are missing from the end
of Prof Qumsiyeh’s talk but he ended on the hopeful note that those working
against the occupation of Palestine are not only on the side of history but of
nature too. When I spoke to him
privately the next day and confessed a degree of despondency and hopelessness
as I saw increasingly the success of the Zionist strategy of equating in
people’s minds, the media, governments etc any criticism of Israel as a veiled
form of anti-semitism, he said “all I know is, every morning when I get up I
look at myself in the mirror and say, if I can do one little thing today to
help the cause, then I must, and that’s all I can do”.

Nov 4, 2017

13 days away and I am back in my beloved Palestine. England is like any other country: it has a mix of people of all
interests and backgrounds and it has a history that includes good and bad
deeds. Its contribution to human knowledge has been exceptionally rich and I got to visit and give talks at centers of knowledge like Oxford and the British Museum of Natural History. I always reflection how the genius of Shakespeare and Darwin and Wallace contrast with the deeds of Balfour (anniversary of the infamous "promise" this past week),
Weizman, and Blair. On this trip I met hundreds of people that actually matter
because they are working hard to change reality around them. I spoke at universities like Leeds, Warwick and Oxford and at museums and networked with so many hundreds of good people.
Many became interested in partnering with us at the Palestine Museum of Natural
History and Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability (palestinenature.org). Many donate, plan to volunteer, and plan to cooperate with us. I arrived in Palestine tired but

more hopeful than ever. I see our garden doing well, volunteers working away. On the flight back and in Jordan overnights I read two books edied by Norma Hashim ("The Prisoners Diaries" and "Dreaming of Freedom: Palestinian Child Prisoners Speak". I was moved to tears and especially upon seeing the land of Palestine.

Below is an excerpt from my book “Sharing the Land of Canaan” on the
other side of the good British people. In my latter book “Popular Resistance in
Palestine” I discuss how the British Empire employed the services of Lieutenant
Colonel George Gawler (1796-1869). Gawler was a colonization expert after whom
a city in Australia is named (Gawler City). In 1845, Gawler published how this
might be accomplished in "Tranquilization of Syria and the East:
Observations and Practical Suggestions, in Furtherance of the Establishment of
Jewish Colonies in Palestine, the Most Sober and Sensible Remedy for the
Miseries of Asiatic Turkey." In 1852, the Association for
Promoting Jewish Settlement in Palestine was founded by Gawler and other
British officials and later evolved it into the Palestine Fund.

George Gawler

Excerpt from “Sharing the Land of Canaan” Chapter 11 posted at http://qumsiyeh.org/chapter11/The events leading up to the support of Britain and France for Zionist aspirations have received little historical discussion. In examining historical documents of powerful nations like France and Britain, we find these nations issuing declarations to support the Zionist aspirations. This came in France first with a letter sent from Jules Cambon, Secretary General of the French Foreign Ministry to Nahum Sokolow (at the time head of the political wing of the World Zionist Organization based in London) dated June 4, 1917:

You were kind enough to inform me of your project regarding the expansion of the Jewish colonization of Palestine. You expressed to me that, if the circumstances were allowing for that, and if on another hand, the independency of the holy sites was guaranteed, it would then be a work of justice and retribution for the allied forces to help the renaissance of the Jewish nationality on the land from which the Jewish people was exiled so many centuries ago. The French Government, which entered this present war to defend a people wrongly attacked, and which continues the struggle to assure victory of right over might, cannot but feel sympathy for your cause, the triumph of which is bound up with that of the Allies. I am happy to give you herewith such assurance (7).

Some five months later, on November 2, 1917, the British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour conveyed to Lord Rothschild a similar declaration of sympathy with Zionist aspirations. It stated that:

Palestinians and others in the Arab world were immediately
alarmed. This declaration was issued when Britain had no
jurisdiction over the area, and was done without consultation of the
inhabitants of the land that was to become a "national home for the Jewish
people." The declaration also wanted to protect "rights
and political status" of Jews who choose not to immigrate to
Palestine. However, the native Palestinians are simply referred to
as non-Jews and their political rights are not mentioned but only their "civic
and religious rights". Lord Balfour wrote in a private
memorandum sent to Lord Curzon, his successor at the Foreign Office (Curzon
initially opposed Zionism) on 11 August 1919:

For in Palestine we do not propose to go through the form of consulting the
wishes of the present inhabitants ... The four great powers are committed to
Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long
tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the
desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land
(8)

The Jules and Balfour declarations are two documents that demonstrate the
support made to the Zionist supranational entity that facilitated giving them
control over a land that neither of the two governments had control of at the
time Some British authors have provided explanations of this support based on a
quid pro quo for Weizman's contribution to the British war efforts through such
efforts as the development of better chemicals for explosives. Some
argued that it was related to Britain's simple domestic situation with many
Zionists both in the government and among the electorate. It could
also be argued that Britain and France now had more reason had to benefit from
a revival of their early 1840s desires to settle European Jews in Palestine as
a way of a structural remodeling of Middle East geopolitics. Undermining the
Ottoman Empire, which was now allied with Germany, provides only partial explanation
and a poor one at best.

Jewish population in Palestine at the time was miniscule and most and was
hardly in any position to engage in resistance against the Ottoman
Empire. By contrast, nationalistic Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula
were willing to oppose the Ottoman Empire and eager to liberate their native
lands from the grip of the Turks. England in fact promised to
support their independence as a result of their convergent interests as
supported by documents such as the British correspondence with Sharif Hussain
of Arabia and in the memoirs of T. E. Lawrence "of
Arabia". As historians do, there is much argument about the
factors and their relative importance that led to the decisions made by the
governments in question. Much is now written about how the US
entered the war and the possible role of influential corporate interests and US
Zionists in bringing the US media and government to support the war efforts.

The British had also made a promise of independence to the Arabs if they aided
them in opposing the Ottoman Empire. This was one of many
"promises" but it was the one that was to over-ride all others as
concrete actions were to reveal in just a short period of time. It
important to note that these governments declared their public support for
Zionism, even while simultaneously making private assurances to
Arabs. The British and French public support was later joined by the
Americans.

With acquiescence by the ailing President Wilson and an American administration
slowly sinking into isolationism, the British had a free hand to implement
their plans in Palestine. Palestinians, both Christians and Muslims,
rioted against the British forces on February 27, 1920 in
Jerusalem. The British command in Palestine recommended that the
Balfour Declaration be revoked. However, the British leadership in
London did not share the views of their soldiers and commanders in
Palestine. As soon as Britain managed to secure the League of
Nations mandate, it replaced its military governor there with a Zionist Jew:
Sir Herbert Samuel as the first High Commissioner of Palestine
(1920-25). It was Samuel who so effectively coached Weizmann during
the Balfour negotiations. After Samuel became high commissioner,
Jewish immigration greatly increased, and with it Palestinian
resistance. Herbert Samuel and the Zionist leaning colonial offices
in Palestine proceeded to set up the political, legal, and the economic
underpinning for transforming the area to a Jewish country. Britain,
with the acquiescence of other great powers, acquired the powers needed for its
colonial venture. At the World Zionist Organization meeting held in
London in July 1920, a new financial arm was established named the Keren
Hayesod. The British-drafted Palestine mandate referred to this economic
imperial structure:

An appropriate Jewish agency shall be recognised as a public body for the
purpose of advising and co-operating with the Administration of Palestine in
such economic, social and other matters as may affect the establishment of the
Jewish national home and the interests of the Jewish population in Palestine,
and, subject always to the control of the Administration to assist and take
part in the development of the country. The Zionist organization, so
long as its organization and constitution are in the opinion of the Mandatory
appropriate, shall be recognised as such agency. It shall take steps
in consultation with His Britannic Majesty's Government to secure the
co-operation of all Jews who are willing to assist in the establishment of the
Jewish national home. (9)

The fund was registered on March 23, 1921, as a British limited
company. The executive of the Zionist Organization chose the
chairman of the board and its members Funds that were collected helped finance
the two largest projects to industrialize Palestine in the late 1920s; the
Electric Company and the Palestine Potash Company (PPC) (10). Moshe
Novemiesky, a leading Zionist, founded the PPC. In 1929, the British
Colonial Office gave a concession to develop mineral resources in the Dead Sea
to the PPC. The PPC was instrumental in generating large amounts of
money funneled to the Zionist program. In 1952, after the state of
Israel was established, the company became an Israeli State nationalized agency
called the Dead Sea Works (11).

Arthur Rogers described the contribution of this British Concession to
financing the Zionist movement after 1929 in his 1948 book (12). In the book
there is a description of the report by the colonial office in 1925
on the fabulous wealth to be derived from the Dead Sea
minerals. There is also a report of a Zionist Conference in
Australia in 1929 in which Zionists were ecstatic about the fact that Britain
gave this concession to a committed Zionist by the name of Novomiesky.

As early as October 25, 1919 Winston Churchill predicted that Zionism implied
the clearing of the indigenous population, he wrote: "there are the Jews,
whom we are pledged to introduce into Palestine, and who take it for granted
the local population will be cleared out to suit their convenience" 13. In public, Churchill sought
to assure the Arabs that Britain was pursuing a humane policy of limited Jewish
immigration, that there is space without displacing native Arabs, and there is
no need for Jewish State. But British private cabinet meeting minutes of
October 1941 speak differently:

I may say at once that if Britain and the United States emerged victorious from
the war, the creation of a great Jewish state in Palestine inhabited by
millions of Jews will be one of the leading features of the peace conference
discussions (14).

This of course was contrary to the conclusion reached two years earlier by the
British commission of inquiry at the end of the Palestinian uprising of
1936-1939. This Paper stated:

The Royal Commission and previous commissions of Enquiry have drawn attention
to the ambiguity of certain expressions in the Mandate, such as the expression
`a national home for the Jewish people', and they have found in this ambiguity
and the resulting uncertainty as to the objectives of policy a fundamental
cause of unrest and hostility between Arabs and Jews.
... That Palestine was not to be converted into a Jewish State might be held to
be implied in the passage from the Command Paper of 1922 which reads as
follows "Unauthorized statements have been made to the effect
that the purpose in view is to create a wholly Jewish
Palestine. Phrases have been used such as that `Palestine is to
become as Jewish as England is English.' His Majesty's Government
regard any such expectation as impracticable and have no such aim in
view. Nor have they at any time contemplated ... The disappearance
or the subordination of the Arabic population, language or culture in
Palestine. They would draw attention to the fact that the terms of
the (Balfour) Declaration referred to do not contemplate that Palestine as a
whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home
should be founded IN PALESTINE. (highlight in original)

But this statement has not removed doubts, and His Majesty's Government
therefore now declares unequivocally that it is not part of their policy that
Palestine should become a Jewish State. They would indeed regard it
as contrary to their obligations to the Arabs under the Mandate, as well as to
the assurances which have been given to the Arab people in the past, that the
Arab population of Palestine should be made the subjects of a Jewish State
against their will (15).

It is clear from this candid paper that the British undertook obligations under
vague (I would argue intentionally vague) wordings likely to give them
flexibility in implementation. The events between 1918 and 1938 had
caused them up to reconsider their position. However, by this point
forces were in motion that made a change virtually impossible The Yishuv were
already strong and well armed in Palestine, Britain entered World War II, and
Hitler's attacks on Jews made it less likely for the British to begin to
enforce their curbs on Jewish immigration to Palestine proposed in the White
Paper. One of the first acts of the nascent state of Israel in
addition to instituting laws to prevent native Palestinians from returning to
their homes and lands, was to repeal the White paper

Oct 11, 2017

This is a school in Beit Taamar that has been demolished by the Israeli occupation the day before it opened. Students went to a demolished school but volunteers quickly rebuilt the school. The Palestine Museum of Natural History donated some school supplies.

Sep 3, 2017

It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of Mohammed Abdul Qavi who died peacefully on Sunday 27th August 2017 in his beloved Palestine.

Qavi was born in Delhi, India, on 6 February 1936, and moved with his family to Karachi, Pakistan following the partition in 1948 (he noted it as a nakba/catastrophe for the people). His second 12 years were spent in Karachi and Sind followed by 14 years in Chittagong and Dhaka (then East Pakistan) where he married and had his first child. In the early 1970’s, Qavi established his interior fitting business in Sharjah, UAE, in 1974 which resulted in a career highlight, winning the contract for the interior of the Dubai World Trade Tower in 1979. During his time in the UAE, Qavi also won numerous bridge trophies and also regularly enjoyed the international cricket scene.

Qavi and family, by now including his two daughters, moved to the UK in 1983, settling first in Kew where Qavi would spend the weekends walking in the gardens with his children and then moved to Blackheath, London. Here, Qavi bought both his first home, and the pine furniture business that he ran until he retired. He relished the cultural opportunities that London offered and indulged his love of books and literature, which he inherited from his parents. Qavi delighted in attending the theatre, and concerts of both Indian and Western classical music, for many years, holding a season ticket for the Proms.

Qavi loved poetry, reading and reciting in Urdu, Persian and English, and had a keen interest in world history and current affairs. He enjoyed cooking Indian food for friends and engaging in deep discussions of subjects ranging from human rights to philosophy to poetry. Qavi attended local chapter meetings of the United Nations Association, Quaker meetings for worship, the winter gathering of the Muslim Institute, and many other political gatherings, developing a wide network of friends and fellow activists.

Qavi strongly believed in being the change that he wanted to see, and would act wherever he saw injustice. He began staging regular peaceful protests, starting initially in the late 1990’s in Blackheath village with a placard that read ‘Repair the World, Do Not Destroy It’, and outside the Pakistan High Commission in London against the complicity of the Pakistani government in the US attacks on Afghanistan in 2001, with a banner that read in Urdu ‘You Have Sold The Blood of Our Martyrs’. From then on, Qavi would regularly attend peaceful protests and demonstrations, including those against the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, and in support of the Occupy movement. Qavi continued his own regular vigils, and also joined the campaigner Brian Haw in his protests against the US and its coalition partners in the bombing of the Iraqi people and killing of thousand children due to sanctions on Iraq.

Qavi had a lifelong passion for education believing in the power of knowledge to transform societies. When he was a teenager, on passing his Matriculation exams, he collected old textbooks and arranged distribution of these to needy students. This was the beginning of the Students Welfare Organisation (SWO), one of the oldest student social organisations in Pakistan, that continues to be active today, helping the children of disadvantages parents in Karachi. Indeed, when Qavi visited Karachi in 2012, the SWO held a reception to honor one of it’s founders at which Qavi delivered a speech recounting the genesis of the organisation.

Continuing his support for education in Pakistan, Qavi funded the schooling of many children and students, both personally and through welfare organisations. He arranged the distribution of hundreds of books to the libraries of schools and institutions in Karachi and beyond. In 2004, Qavi founded the Roshni Welfare Trust, in memory of his parents, which as well as continuing to support education, distributed ration bags during the holy month of Ramadan to needy families. He also funded the building of a school through The Citizen Foundation in his home district of Shah Faisal Colony, Karachi, that has been serving underprivileged families since 2005.

In the UK, Qavi funded scholarships in Maths and Physics at the school his daughters attended in Blackheath, in their name.

Qavi first visited Palestine in 2002 and then devoted most of his time either in Palestine or working for it. His activism and philanthropy in this regard included establishing a scholarship fund that covered tuitions for over 100 students in four Palestinian Universities, passing out books and literature especially to young people, and attending regular peace vigils.

Qavi admired poems and life of the late Tawfiq Ziyad (previous mayor of Nazareth and member of the Israeli Knesset) and met with his widow and daughter. This part of one poem is now found around the occupied Palestinian areas courtesy of Qavi:

Here we will stay (Huna Baqun)

In Lidda, in Ramle, in the Galilee

Here we will stay

Like a wall on your chest

And in your throat

Like a shard of glass, a cactus thorn

And in your eyes

A sandstorm

The defiant message of persistence of native people resonated with all. But Qavi was such a gentle spirit and every week he held a sign that had in Hebrew ‘Tikkun Olam’ (repair the world) and in English ‘Keep The Hope Alive’ which he held silently even in the most harrowing of circumstances. The last poem he had translated to Arabic and distributed was “Mourn Not the Dead” by Ralph Chaplin

Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie

Dust unto dust

The calm sweet earth that mothers all who die

As all men must;

Mourn not your captured comrades who must dwell

Too strong to strive

Each in his steel-bound coffin of a cell,

Buried alive;

But rather mourn the apathetic throng

The cowed and the meek

Who see the world's great anguish and its wrong

And dare not speak!

Qavi was one who not only spoke but worked and donated in ways that created an amazing ripple effect for peace and justice.

He is survived by his wife Zarina, children Saad, Tara, and Mohini and grandchildren Aisha, Yasmin, and Cosimo, his brothers, Salaam and Ghani, and hundreds of his friends who will remember his sage advice.

Memorials will be held in Bethlehem and London on the following dates and locations:

About Me

Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh teaches and does research at Bethlehem University (BU) and directs the BU's cytogenetics laboratory and the Palestine Museum of Natural History and Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability in occupied Palestine. He also taught at Birzeit and Al-Quds Universities. He is author of "Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human rights and the Israeli/Palestinian Struggle", “Popular Resistance in Palestine: A history of Hope and Empowerment”, "Mammals of the Holy Land", and "The Bats of Egypt." He formerly served on the board of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People in Beit Sahour and Al-Rowwad Cultural and Theatre Society at Aida Refugee Camp.